


Slow to Anger and Abounding in Love

by K_dAzrael



Category: Marvel 616, Thor (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-13
Updated: 2011-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:26:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_dAzrael/pseuds/K_dAzrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the following Norsekink prompt: ‘So in the comics, Loki puts an end to Balder's pacifism by luring him into an ambush. I'd love to see a fic where some big buff Asgardian warrior is constantly flirting with Loki and totally crossing the line with the suggestions he's making. The Warriors Three are like, "Hey Balder, aren't you going to do anything about that guy hitting on your boyfriend?" So Balder tries to have a word with the chap, who thinks this is a hilarious example of why Balder's too much of a pussy for Loki. Then, the guy goes way too far with Loki [...] Balder lays the smackdown on this bastard then drags Loki off for sexy claiming and reassertion of his dominance.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow to Anger and Abounding in Love

“It’s not,” Fandral said confidentially to Balder, “that I in any way approve of your choice of lover. Because I don’t.”

Fandral went on to list many of Loki’s worst qualities, illustrating the points with anecdotes of the many treacheries the trickster had perpetrated against Asgard and its inhabitants.

“I understand what you are trying to say, Fandral,” said Balder, gently interrupting the diatribe after some minutes. “Your disapproval and concern for my well-being are both noted.”

“No, no, no – that wasn’t the point man!” Fandral twiddled one side of his moustache, teasing it into a more pronounced upward flourish. “While he that you have chosen to woo might indeed be the most unsuitable blackguard in the nine realms, he _is_ your acknowledged paramour. And Tyr is making you look like a fool.”

Balder glanced over to where Loki and Tyr sat, about six seats away down the board. They were both visibly intoxicated: in Tyr this presented as a deep, ruddy flush and an overly-loud speaking voice; in Loki as half-lidded glittering eyes. Tyr was leaning close and stroking the back of Loki’s arm with the calloused forefinger of his remaining hand.

“I am sure the noble Tyr means no harm,” Balder asserted charitably. “And Loki... is Loki. He does exactly as he pleases, with whomsoever he pleases.”

The thing was, Balder thought, that Loki wasn’t exactly handsome. His features were not of the same ethereal quality as those of some of the Aesir, but in his favour were his eyes – such a clear and uncommon colour – and, more than that, some unnameable quality, something that was akin to seductiveness, but more insidious and not so brashly carnal–

“Balder!” Volstagg broke in, apparently scandalized by Balder’s weary acceptance. “Is it blood that runs in your veins or is it tepid water? Have you no care for your honour, if nothing else?”

“I see no honour in causing needless strife. They are drunk and in the morning they will be sober.” Balder sighed and rose from the table. “I am going to bed – where Loki may join me if he so wills it.”

Fandral and Volstagg shook their heads and gave Balder deeply reproachful looks; Hogun stared into his cup of mead to avoid his gaze.

“I am sure," Balder stated, as if trying to convince himself, “that Tyr will be contrite... if not Loki. Certainly, it will not happen again.”

When Loki climbed into bed next to him a few scant minutes after Balder himself retired, the god of light pulled him close, kissing his mead-sticky lips.

“I hope you know that you vexed me greatly.”

“Oh,” said Loki, feigning surprise. “Did I indeed?”

*~*~*

At the next feast Fandral’s indignation reached near-hysterical levels.

“They insult you and this assembly with their shameless dallying!” he cried, overturning goblets with the trajectory of his emphatic gesture. “They make a mockery of your love, Balder! The very least you could do is voice your disapproval.”

“The _very_ least!” Volstagg boomed, thumping the table and making everything thereupon rattle and dance.

Balder brushed his pale locks back off his forehead. “No, my friends, the _very least_ I can do is simply ignore them.”

“He’s staring at you,” Hogun grumbled.

“Who is?”

“Loki,” all three replied in unison.

True enough, although seemingly in an intimate tête-à-tête with Tyr, Loki was staring at Balder. There was a keenly malicious smile on his face.

Balder winced as he recalled the events of that morning. It began well, with both gods rolling over together in bed. Balder’s kisses and touches were still gentle, drowsy and unfocused, for everything in his world was warmth and pleasure – Loki’s hair tickling his chest the only break in expanses of soft, dry skin. Then Loki had offered his neck, pressing it to Balder’s lips and hissing in his ear: “sink your teeth into me, mark me, debase me–”

And Balder had pushed him away, startled and utterly dismayed.

“He’s goading me,” Balder said.

Sif leaned across the table, tapping the scrubbed wood for emphasis as she asserted: “Exactly. So you know he won’t be content until you do something about it.”

Balder sighed with infinite weariness and rose from his place, crossing to where Tyr was murmuring something into Loki’s ear.

“Tyr, I would have words with you.”

Tyr sat back and gave him a haughty look, stroking his bushy moustache. “Then speak on.”

“As I think you know, Loki and I are lovers. I can take much in jest, Tyr, but you embarrass me and yourself with this display.”

There was a loud, jarring scrape as Tyr pushed back his chair. Balder found himself craning his neck to look up at the larger, more burly warrior.

“If Loki is yours, then why does he accept my attentions?”

“I believe it is because he would cause us to quarrel, noble Tyr.”

“Think you so?” the god of war sneered. “Or is it that he has reason to be dissatisfied? Can one such as he truly be content with a milksop? With a once-proud warrior gone to seed?” Tyr laughed and prodded Balder’s stomach. “Perhaps battle is not all you have lost your appetite for.”

“Ah,” Balder said. “I assumed you were insulting me by accident rather than design, but see I was mistaken.” He turned his gaze to Loki, who remained seated, calmly sipping his mead and smiling that special smile he reserved for watching a well-laid cruel jest play out. “Loki, is what Tyr says true? Do you tire of me and wish for the love of another?”

Loki gave a careless shrug and continued to drink. His _not_ talking was, oddly, much more infuriating than his usual stream of honeyed lies.

“I had thought...” Balder’s voice hitched. “I had thought that I had earned at least the courtesy of hearing it from your own lips, in private. But if that is not to be... I wish you well.”

Balder turned, mumbling “excuse me,” as he pushed his way past the still-looming war god.

“Hah!” he heard Tyr bark in amused disbelief. “His rival insults him and yet he _apologises_? Truly, his liver is as white as his hair!”

*~*~*

Balder could not say, with any degree of certainty, where he went after that – he walked the corridors in a daze. He was definitely not crying, which was good – although he wiped at his eyes with his sleeve and it came away damp. And after a while he had to sit down and lean his back against the cold stone wall.

As he sat there, not knowing or particularly caring where exactly in the castle he was, he began to hear footsteps and the lilt of conversation. He got to his feet and dusted himself off, cocking his head as he tried to identify the approaching speakers.

Suddenly, there came a sound like a thud, followed by a growl, and then voices echoing:

 _“Come on, don’t tease me, trickster.”_

 _“I said no.”_

 _“Just let me taste you–”_

There was a sound like a cut-off shout and more thuds.

Balder sprinted around the corner and came upon a horrifying scene – Tyr had Loki pinned with his wrists above his head using his single huge hand. Tyr’s mouth plundered the smaller god’s as Loki struggled uselessly against him, making sounds of rage and distress.

In an instant, the desire to reason with Tyr utterly fled from Balder. He let out an inarticulate yell and shoved Tyr against the opposite wall, delivering a single, stunningly hard punch to the warrior-god’s jaw.

Tyr pressed his hand to his cheek and stared wildly at Balder, intoxication and shock dulling his usually lightning-swift reactions.

“Let that be an end of it!” Balder heard himself command. “You have transgressed against Loki and I have repaid it. Get thee hence before the peace of our court is further disturbed and Odin discovers what you have done to offend his royal son.”

At the invocation of the Allfather’s name Tyr reared back, expression quickly shuttering its abject horror. “I will go,” he snapped back, jabbing a finger at Balder, “but think not that this is the end, Balder the so-called Brave!”

Balder took a few deep breaths as he watched Tyr’s retreating back, then turned to look at Loki, who grinned at him and promptly disappeared.

From behind him Balder heard the sound of slow clapping and then Loki stepped into view, apparently exiting from the wall.

Balder boggled at him. “That was a shade?”

Loki brushed an imaginary speck of lint from his cloak. “Did you really think I would let that ugly oaf touch me and live?”

Balder’s anger flared again. “You... this was all a plan? You let me think he was forcing you just to get a _reaction_ from me?”

“Well, this was plan c. It turns out that you are very, very slow,” Loki cocked his head and asked in a tone of incredulity: “have you been _crying_?”

There was the resounding clang of the horns of Loki’s helmet violently meeting the wall as Balder propelled him up against it. “You! You put me through all this for naught and now you mock at my pain?”

Loki’s eyes glittered with enjoyment. “Yes, Balder, I am a terrible person. Clearly you would be much better off without me. Run to your friend Fandral’s arms, why don’t you?”

Balder stayed the trickster with a hand planted in the centre of his chest. “No, no more of this foolishness. You are mine, Loki, as I am yours. From now on you will sit next to me at board so everyone knows to whom you belong.”

Loki’s expression seemed to sharpen. “And how shall _I_ know it? Tell me.”

Balder’s voice dropped to a growl, his next words spilling forth without a moment’s hesitation: “because I will mark you all over your body with my teeth and hands, so you will feel it on your skin even when fully clothed.”

“Yes,” Loki wrapped his arms around the other god’s shoulders, clinging to him. “Do it then. What are you waiting for?”

Balder pushed him back and took hold of Loki’s wrist to lead him towards his own rooms. “It will be in _private_ , Loki.”

*~*~*

Balder usually enjoyed making love face to face, but after he had kissed Loki’s lips to swollen redness – sucked darkening bruises to his neck and shoulders, left a perfect impression of his teeth on Loki’s right pectoral and left inner thigh – he flipped the other god onto his front. Loki cursed and made a show of fighting it until Balder leaned hard enough on his wrists to satisfy him.

He used his knee to spread Loki’s thighs, smacking the sensitive spot where leg met the curve of his arse with an open hand. Loki yelped and glared back at him through a curtain of black hair, face half submerged in the pillow.

Balder lowered his head to breathe hotly on the pucker of Loki’s hole, listening with satisfaction to the tremulous whine this provoked. He sat back on his heels to ask: “is this what you want, Loki, for me to be the one to touch you in all the most unseemly ways?”

“Yes, damn you,” Loki hissed. “Get on with it, or I swear I’ll– agh!”

By the time he had licked Loki open, leaving his entrance slick and glistening, Balder was ready to admit to himself how much he enjoyed making the liesmith utterly incoherent. Fighting the urge to linger over foreplay, as he so often did (much to Loki’s apparent chagrin), he coated his prick quickly in oil and pushed into his lover with a smooth, unrelenting stroke of his hips.

He took Loki roughly at first, fingertips leaving dents in the smooth, white flesh of the trickster god’s hips. When he had Loki shoving back against him in heedless pleasure and desperation for more, Balder used heretofore unknown reserves of self-discipline to slow the pace and then pulled Loki back into his lap, keeping him there with an arm across his chest.

“Shh, Loki, be easy,” he murmured, gentling him with a hand on Loki’s long, taut thigh.

“Balder you halfwit, I swear if you don’t–” Loki’s protest trailed into a gasp as Balder began supplementing the minute twitches of his hips with stroking the vulnerable weight of Loki’s sac.

“Listen to me...”

Balder had never been much for talking during sex, beyond the occasional whispered endearment. He had had partners who had done so, but he had always found that it embarrassed him intensely – the lines they spoke seemed rehearsed, the product of so many loveless couplings. Now, it was different: he and Loki were building a new structure for their encounters, and there would be need of guiding words – of defining words.

“I am angry with you, Loki,” he told him, “But this does not come from anger, do you understand?”

Loki nodded. Balder wasn’t entirely convinced until the other god surprised him with his next action: Loki raised his arms and linked them behind Balder’s neck. A strange gesture of surrender, Balder realised, as he tilted his his head to kiss the translucent, sensitive skin of Loki’s inner elbow with its underlying branching of fine blue veins.

“There is a part of your body which I have not touched yet.” Balder took a moment to trace the impressions of his teeth on Loki’s shoulder with the very tip of his tongue. “I will touch it, at the very last. _Soon_.”

Loki moaned and pushed back; Balder bit his lip, fighting the powerful urge to give himself over to his own pleasure in Loki’s willing body. “First you have to tell me why I should,” he said, biting Loki’s jaw and rocking against him, torturously slow.

Loki shuddered in his grasp, seemingly at a loss until he blurted out: “because... you’re the only one I allow– Balder... Balder, do it.”

It sounded as if this obscure reply meant something more to Loki than was immediately apparent, so Balder kissed his neck and fondled his prick just as roughly as he needed. Loki came arching his spine, trying to shift closer and away all at once as Balder continued to hold him firmly in place, one hand clenching around Loki’s shaft and slippery with his seed. Balder was only a bare moment behind, his thigh muscles trembling from the effort of keeping them both upright as he felt the tug of climax seizing him and spreading its warmth, spilling himself deep in his lover’s body. He had a vague idea that he was still talking, a run-together nonsense of words like ‘yes’, ‘love’ and ‘mine’ that caused Loki to make a high, sobbing sound Balder had never in his life heard before.

When they slumped down onto the mattress together and wearily pulled the covers about themselves, Loki did not even resist being gathered against Balder’s chest.

In the brief interlude before sleep, Loki traced the darkening bite-marks on his arms with a small, pleased smile on his face, like a child delighted with a newly-gifted souvenir. For his part, Balder found himself dwelling on all that had happened in the past few nights. He glanced down at the trickster’s face and thought, again, that it wasn’t strictly true that Loki was handsome. Yet...

Certainty was not something that came easily to Balder, but as he stroked the kink of Loki’s eyebrow with his thumb he felt confident – the opinions of everyone else within Asgard’s walls be damned – that somewhere along the line he had made a good choice.


End file.
